


Saudade

by FloraOne



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Cunnilingus, Ex Sex, F/M, Fake-Not-Dating, Fingering, Jealous sex, Mutual Pining, POV Tsukino Usagi, Penis In Vagina Sex, Pining, Possessive Sex, Tumblr: Smutember, canon-compliant levels of mutual stalking, sex with the ex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:22:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26430064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FloraOne/pseuds/FloraOne
Summary: When they first remembered, Mamoru had immediately broken up with her. They hadn’t known they had a past life. Or two. They hadn’t known that they were cursed. A 'Break Up Arc Is Real' Angstfest written for Smutember 2020.
Relationships: Chiba Mamoru/Tsukino Usagi
Comments: 52
Kudos: 113
Collections: Smutember 2020 Sailor Moon Fandom





	Saudade

**Author's Note:**

> So here you have my week two story that's actually for a week one trope (sex with the ex, but also fits Pining, and maybe Fake-Not-Dating(ish)?) but eh, who to disregard prompt orders if not the host lol? Anyway, because this is more plot-driven than sex-driven it gets its own story and stands apart from the lemon tree series. Thank you to my wonderful friend Antigone2 who took the time to look this over for me and also cheer me on, thank you so much, love!
> 
> Anyway, if you haven't checked some of the other fics for the event out yet, please do so! There are so many gems being posted, and I collect them all on my blog (floraone on tumblr) under the hashtag smutember2020!
> 
> Anyway, I'll leave you with some of the angstiest sex I've ever written!
> 
> CW: Mutually possessive and very jealous sex

* * *

Saudade  
A Short Story Written for Smutember 2020

* * *

She woke up, not with a start, but soft as the hands that wrapped around her. She knew instinctively, immediately who was in her bed, who the large frame engulfing her was, drawing her to him tightly. As if the breath against her neck had a color and a smell and a unique stamp on her brain that immediately let her know it was him even if he barely ever allowed himself to touch her.

Only then did she notice the slight tremor, the harsh, broken up breathing even when he tried to keep absolutely silent.

He was crying. He'd broken into her room, slipped into her bed, and he was clinging to her and he was crying.

She froze for a moment. Terrified that if she moved he might disappear, run. Terrified to break the spell that had allowed him to seek comfort in her bed.

In the end she trusted herself that she could take it if he decided to run.

However, as if he was a skittish, wild animal, she decided on not spooking him, and kept her movements slow.

She moved her hand over one of his, clasped around her middle in a death-grip, and squeezed.

As if she found an on-switch, it caused a sob to break from his throat. He pressed it into her hair, gasping loud and making room for the next, and the next after that.

"Shhh," she cooed, both hands on his arm, pressing tight, "I'm here."

It was instinctive. Obviously, he could have cried for anything. But... She was sure it was his nightmares.

"I can't do this," he sobbed, sniffling, broken, "I keep seeing you die. I can't take it."

"I'm here."

This happened sometimes. Sometimes, he just needed to hear her breathe. Afterwards he'd feel guilty, feel like he wasn't strong enough, pretend it never happened.

That night, he stayed in her bed until morning. Until his tears were dried tracks on his face and he fell into a deep, exhausted sleep.

She turned around at the break of dawn and watched him sleep — ink-black hair messy against her sheets, darkest eyelashes so long and delicate against his skin — until she could no longer hold her eyes open.

When she woke up again, he was long gone, and it was her turn to cry.

* * *

Some days it was harder than others. He claimed it was when she was in danger, but Usagi knew better.

It was hardest for her when she was faced with the fact that even though he could never be hers, he could be someone else's. And she suspected it might be the same for him.

They didn't manage to separate their lives completely. Never had. Not even when she didn't remember him yet and they were just bickering idiots in the streets of Juuban for those wasted, lost years they could have been happy in oblivion. Not even then, when she'd wished on the silver crystal for a normal life on her dying breath and it had granted it, had they managed to stay away from each other.

How could they? They had mutual friends. They lived only a few streets apart. They were partners-in-vigilantism. Two halves of a whole that were lost when apart. They loved each other, even if it was only pain it ever brought.

One of the worst moments for her was one birthday of Unazuki's they had both, of _course_ , attended, because of course they never learned. Unazuki who liked to celebrate her birthdays with a side of speed-dating. Inviting as many singles as she could and rubbing her hands with glee as she thrust them strategically at each other.

It had been awkward enough, in that painfully masochistic way, in the years that Unazuki had paired them together, stating she thought they'd fit perfectly. It had been awkward both before they got together and after they knew they were cursed.

But, _boy_ was it worse when Unazuki had given up on them for the first time, and paired them off with _others_. And well, Usagi was a jealous person as it was, and sometimes it was just utter agony.

That first time it happened Usagi didn't even remember the name of the unfortunate boy who had the pleasure of being ignored by her that night as she inched him closer and closer towards the kitchen to where Mamoru was _chuckling_ at something that girl with him was _saying_.

"This is Komatsu Kenta, he draws dōga for Toei, his mother is a famous shoujo animator, and this is Tsukino Usagi, the biggest otome you will find in this room. She works for Nakayoshi," Unazuki had introduced brightly, all teeth in her smile, and Usagi had barely even glanced at the guy, because the girl who was with Mamoru had the shiniest hair she'd ever seen with no fizz whatsoever and clasped her hands elegantly at her front instead of gesticulating wildly with them.

Mamoru hadn't chuckled at her that way in _years_.

Her gut felt like it was on fire, and Unazuki's suddenly so stifling studio apartment right with it.

She turned her back, smiled politely at something the boy in front of her had said (what was his name?), and he startled a bit when she met his eyes for the first time, and she did too.

He was surprisingly good looking. Minako would have started wolf-whistling.

"Oh," he said with a smile that was objectively cute. And then smoothly segued them into conversation. "So, do you have a favorite anime?"

But his hair wasn't black and his eyes didn't hold the weight of the world and his touch would never tingle on her skin.

"Sailor V," she said absentmindedly, and couldn't help but turn her head.

Mamoru hadn't looked at _her_ during these two minutes once.

"My mother worked on the recent reboot!" The boy said excitedly, and really, she should be listening.

Instead, she positioned herself in a way that she could see Mamoru behind the guy's shoulder a little better.

Mamoru was smiling. He was smiling and tilting his head and nodding to what the girl with him was saying.

"—Honestly I think it's a shame the mahou shoujo genre is so painfully neglected and underfunded. The Sailor V anime set the stage and people did nothing with it," the guy said with a brush of hair behind his ear, but she wasn't following. "Animes like Precure were super popular, too. I just don't understand why no one has adapted the Sailor Senshi for an anime yet. Magical Girls are real, I don't see why the producers think it's a risk to—"

And then she said something and they moved to the _kitchen_ and it's quieter there and—

"Hey," Usagi interrupted him rudely, too suddenly, and he was pushing more hair behind his ear and looking at her nervously. "Do you want a drink, too?"

"Ah!", he said, eyes widening. "Sure, of course! We—"

But she didn't let him talk. Instead, she pulled at his arm and practically dragged him to the kitchen.

"Uh—"

And then she made him duck behind the counter with her so she could listen in on the way too pleasant conversation Mamoru was having.

"Um—" he made, blushing.

The kitchen wasn't empty. A group of Unazuki's co-eds from the Arts department were mingling around the fridge, laughing and joking. Someone was rinsing out a few glasses at the sink above her whom she couldn't quite see. More voices by the corner, the unpleasant smell of cigarettes mixed with the fresh air of an open window, and in it, Mamoru's deep baritone and the pleasant voice of a woman she didn't know and he now did.

"I'm more of a fan of his earlier work, I have to confess. Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World is fantastic, no?" this infuriatingly pretty woman was saying.

"Hm," Mamoru tilted his head with that soft smile. "Yes, there's something quite enticing about the idea that dreams might be more real than reality." And then he reached for one of the dark green bottles and poured for the girl first, and Usagi wanted to smash the bottle. "Even when his imagery is quite disturbing sometimes," he said, moving that bottle to his own glass second with that smile he never directed at her anymore, and Usagi forgot to breathe.

"What, skulls stripped off skin and flesh are too much for a med student?" she said with too much tease in her voice, too much flirt, and Usagi curled her hands so hard into her own skirt she felt something ripping because she didn't trust herself not to run and grab that sleek, perfect hair instead and yank her away from her prince. Squeezing her eyes shut, she collapsed and pressed her back harder against the counter.

It got so much worse when he chuckled again, that rumbling sound she swore she would be able to make out across worlds from a cacophony of sound. That chuckle he used to press against her hair when she teased him, that chuckle that would be followed by his hands wandering her skin and that smile turning more suggestive when they didn't know better. That chuckle that was _hers_.

She clawed her hands into the counter, lifted her eyes over it, and there they were.

He made a noncommittal sound, something Usagi couldn't place. But what she could place _very well_ was the look that girl was giving him. And also the way she pulled out a slip of cardstock from her purse, and wrote on it.

Usagi gasped, and Mamoru's eyes whipped to hers. And when Usagi dashed away, boiling, exploding, hurting, moving through the gaps between bodies to get _out_ of there, she was distinctly aware that he was following her, and only remotely realised she had not a single clue when exactly the guy she'd dragged with her into the kitchen had left her side.

Trying not to hyperventilate, trying not to cry, trying to get away before he caught up with her, she stumbled out into the hallway, crashing into someone who was walking in at the same time and mumbling an apology without looking up. She grabbed her ballet flats from the pile of shoes on Unazuki's narrow shoe shelf, causing a few to tumble down messily onto the ground. She fled without putting them on.

When the door closed behind her, muffling the sound of chatter and music to a dull sort of hum, the tears sprang to her eyes, and she tried so hard to keep her chin from wobbling.

She exhaled shakily, dropped her blush-pink patent leather flats on the ground noisily, and was about to step into them when, _of course_ , the door fell open behind her with a push so forceful and sudden it toppled her over.

She crashed with a watery yelp.

"Shit," Mamoru cursed. Moved to help her up, but she sprang away from him.

He was wearing his brown leather jacket, his shoes, and he looked too perfect, and his eyes grew concerned when she glared at him with watery eyes.

Wiping her face with the sleeve of her cardigan, she grabbed her shoes again and rushed barefoot down the stairs.

"Usagi!" he yelled after her. She didn't stop to turn around, but the pounding sound of his footsteps behind her told her he was following.

She just rushed on harder, took the stairs two at a time.

The asphalt felt crunchy and weird beneath her naked feet when she stumbled outside, and so did the autumn breeze on her tear-streaked face in the night. A shiver ran down her spine.

The door fell closed behind her. She dropped her shoes again, messily stepped into them, and walked on.

She'd barely gotten four furious steps away when the door flew open behind her again. "Usako!" he shouted after her.

"What?!" she whirled around angrily, flying hair and flying tears, and then froze.

He looked heartbroken. None of that soft smile and content chuckle left.

And he was also holding her red hooded jacket in his hand.

Oh.

Right.

She wiped her nose on her cardigan again and moved to sniper-snatch it out of his grip, then awkwardly shrugged it on as she walked away from him.

His footsteps followed.

"Talk to me," he begged behind her.

Of course she knew she was being unfair. He didn't want this any more than she did. And yet she couldn't keep the venom out of her voice and stomped her feet a little harder. "You should get back to your date," she bit, and crossed her arms awkwardly, firmly.

He'd caught up with her. Was looking at her sideways, but she refused to look back at him.

"Usako."

"Are you gonna call her?" she groused.

"Of course I'm not."

A beat, and then he added, "You're walking in the wrong direction."

Damn.

She stopped. Could have screamed that he had the gall to be right. And yet he simply steadily looked back at her.

With a pivoting turn, she stalked into the direction they'd come from. Once more, he followed at a slight distance.

"If you're with her you can talk about weird films with fleshless skulls all day," she barked bitterly over her shoulder.

"It's a book, not a film."

This time, she legit growled. A grunting sort of scream, all the frustration in her escaping through her throat and nostrils and eyes. With a yank, she pulled off her shoe once more and threw it at him.

He had the absolute _nerve_ to simply catch it. Simply moved his hand out without even flinching, that absolute _ass_ , and caught it.

He sighed long and deeply even as she withered her glare at him. "Is she your type?" she eventually asked.

His next sigh was even deeper, and he shook his head as if she was being stupid. And of course, she really was.

"No, Usako. You know she's not."

He held her shoe out carefully. As if this time she was the wild animal that he might spook.

She took it in much the same way she'd relieved him of her jacket.

Grunting, she threw it back on the ground.

"She's pretty," she growled against the ground when she stepped back into it.

"If you say so," he said, and it made her inexplicably even more livid.

"I bet you wouldn't tease her about _her_ hair."

He didn't say anything, but his brow drew closer together.

She sniffled, hated herself for the fresh round of angry tears that bubbled so very uninvited from her stupid eye sockets. "You'd look great with her. I bet you'd make the perfect couple. It's gonna take you no time to forget about someone like me with someone so fucking perfect as—"

"Usako, what the hell," he interrupted her with the darkest growl she'd heard from him in a while.

She wiped her nose again. The rubbery fabric of her red jacket left her snot rubbed across it.

"I always knew you could do better than me anyway," she whispered at their feet.

With one long stride of his too-long legs, he was in her personal space, towering over her and glaring.

But she refused to look up.

"Maybe it would be easier if we ...if we aren't…" she hiccupped. Took a deep breath. "If we didn't… If we avoided…"

"If we don't see each other anymore?" he interrupted her harshly.

With a hard sigh, she finally looked up. His gaze gutted her.

"I can't, Usako." His voice broke.

And yes. She knew that. She couldn't either. It was the last that they had of each other. Seeing he was doing ok. Allowing each other a smile, here and there. Watching him. Always. Even when they couldn't...

With the most unattractive sound tearing from her throat, Usagi started crying again. Helplessly. Ugly. Messily.

"Wh-at," she choked out, hiccupping, "What if— what if she'll be your wife," she wailed. "In 10 years. And you'll be over me and I'll still be here and—"

His hands curled around her arms, sudden and tight and too forcefully, and he crushed her against him not unlike the first time they had kissed. Back when they didn't know they couldn't. His tongue in her mouth harsh and rough and demanding and possessive.

She melted. Clawed her hands into the unyielding leather of his jacket so hard it hurt her fingernails, and whimpered into his mouth when his hands clutched the back of her head, the nape of her neck, his face tilted and her tears so salty on his tongue.

"Never," he breathed into her mouth. "Usako. Never," he repeated, and returned his lips to hers to kiss her even harder.

It was a while before he yanked himself free and fled, and she cried harder than she had done before.

* * *

Mostly, when they shared dreams due to some weird fluke of destiny that liked to remind them they were still bound together for eternity, they shared the nightmares. And as excruciating as the experience was, she would not trade it for the world. Because sometimes, so very rarely, they were granted a good dream to share. Sometimes, they dreamt they were allowed.

He held her hand in both of his against his chest as they lay on the surface of the Moon, the endless sky so full of Stars you could not make out individual constellations.

"If we'd never found out, where would we be?" she whispered against his skin, cradled into his side.

He flipped over, his eyes that yearning sorrow she knew best by now, and it was a tragedy all in itself. She barely remembered anymore what he looked like when he'd laughed at her so very, very happily.

But he held her eyes, all pain and regret, even when the scene around them shifted, and they lay under the same blanket of impossibly bright starlight and the colorful streaks and shadows of the milky way, only no longer on the Moon — instead, far above the neon bright Tokyo night on an impossible dome made from a kaleidoscope of color.

As was possible only in dreams and nowhere else, he didn't have to retrieve anything in order to reach for it - the ring simply appeared in his hand from nothing.

He sighed, shuddering and mourning. "Here," he said, and slipped it onto her ring finger where it fit like it was made specifically for her, without breaking her gaze.

It was a heart. So real and detailed and intricate it made her wonder if it really existed outside of this dream. Pink and glittering and beautiful, little stones around it reflecting the starlight off of it and onto his warm chest, and the sob tore through her throat so violently that she woke up.

Her finger was bare in the dead of night, her room a curtain of bleakest-grey; full of shadows and lacking all traces of color in the dark, and her tears came so sudden they pooled wet in the crook of her eye, her nose, dropped cold and pearling down her chin, into her clavicle, into her ear. They flowed so hard she might have drowned in them.

Alone.

When she was in middle school, one of her assignments had been to write a text about what she would want most in the world. At the time, she'd written about something silly like the world's biggest parfait she'd read about in Shingo's edition of the Guinness Book of World Records, because she couldn't think of anything else.

She wanted to go back to that time, cross it out, and write instead:

_The life I could have had with him._

* * *

They'd had 8 months together.

Three years. It had taken them three years to admit it. Years they'd called it bickering even though their flirting had been so disgustingly obvious everyone had seen it but them. Lost time they would never get back. Precious, lost time they could have spent together in obliviousness if they hadn't been so very stubborn. Lost time she would be mourning forever.

When she met Chiba Mamoru, she didn't know she'd met him at least twice before. Once on the Moon, once in front of Osa-P, using his face as a trash can. No, she'd met him again, that baka running around town in her neighborhood and teasing her hair with that panty-dropping soft smirk on his lips, drinking coffee at Crown.

In their magic years of blessed, oblivious normalcy, she'd finished Middle School and befriended Ami and Makoto, she'd entered High School and met Minako - who'd found Rei a while ago. Without knowing them, she'd found them all.

And even though they'd wasted so much precious time, she'd finally admitted to herself at age 17 that the full-body-pounding her heart was so adamant to orchestrate whenever Mamoru's midnight eyes met hers in that slow way, perhaps meant something more than she had allowed herself to see.

(That obnoxiously tormenting way. That stupidly sexy way he would look at her so very intently. One lip turned up and his gaze so very fixated. It had been torture. It had been glorious. She missed it so much.)

Apparently, it had been mutual. Because when she'd finally admitted it to herself, and then to him, he'd reacted by exhaling in a way that felt like his whole body had shuddered in relief, and closed all space between them in one single relieved rush. Enveloping her, lifting her, crushing her, their first kiss had felt like a waterfall of sensation, and like something she'd been made to do but hadn't known, hadn't been able to place the familiarity of, his fingers so tight in her hair it almost hurt, her tongue so deep in his mouth and yet not nearly enough, ever.

She'd noticed something was wrong, of course. He'd noticed it, too. Sent her to doctors, concerned and hovering. The cough that one day came to stay. Or the way it was so hard to breathe that time when she'd spent one unforgettable vacation all with him during golden week - when her parents and Shingo went to Akita and she'd stayed behind. That one week she spent almost entirely in his bed, happy and giggling as she kissed and kissed and kissed his smooth skin under his sheets, and hadn't parted from his side for seven uninterrupted glorious days in a row that she would never get again.

For it all crashed and burned in the spring of her last year of High School. When Seijuro and Natsumi joined her class and they hadn't known yet they were Ail and An, when Luna had had no other choice but to make her remember, and him regret.

Naru had been the first to be attacked, and rushing to her aid because her screams over the phone had woken up every instinct in her blood, Mamoru in her wake because he'd been with her when Naru called, it was all forced back into her mind.

Luna had spoken her first words to them in years with sorrow in her tone, and seconds later, to the shimmer of the moonlight breaking through Naru's window as Usagi collapsed on her knees to the floor, returned Mamoru's and her memory.

The way the images returned in a flood of pain was so excruciating it ripped her heart in half. Her body filled with power as she screamed so terrified that first night she had to transform. That smirk she'd kissed a hundred times as he teased her about a date with Umino, Rei on his arm. A dance at a ball, his words in her ear when she needed strength. The second worst person in the world dying in her arms, the whisper of a memory telling her he'd done that before, thousands of years ago when worlds had crumbled because of their love. His eyes devoid of all humanity when his fingers flexed around her throat at Beryl's order. His still body when she didn't kiss his cold, dead lips goodbye.

Her chin held high when everyone she loved had died for her and here she was alone to end it all. Beryl's curse on her lips the last thing she would ever speak.

The promise that in any life, in any time, their love would kill the daughter of the moon. Slowly and steadily. If she was his ever again, she would breathe death with every passing second. Such was Beryl's parting gift for them.

And it had, already. Her cough that wouldn't go away. How she could not breathe when she'd been with him for too long. Why she got lightheaded when he whispered in her ear that he wanted to be with her forever.

The curse had always been there, they just hadn't known what it was. And it all reflected from his horrified eyes.

Turns out, her heart was never meant to mend again.

He'd left her that same night. When the Cardian was gone, Mamoru hadn't even said goodbye.

But how could she let him go? How was a life in this pain any better?

How cruel was this fate? To be reborn with him and not be allowed to have him? What kind of nightmare was this?

That night, she'd collapsed sobbing, banging against his door until her throat was raw from begging, and she'd heard him crying as he leaned with his back against the door. And yet, he never opened it.

* * *

After the disaster that was Unazuki's birthday party, Usagi had had some thinking to do, and she'd done it with her heart in shreds. Over and over and over she saw herself in her mind's eye, hiding behind kitchen counters watching Mamoru slowly move on without even noticing. Pouring wine into women's glasses and forgetting to hurt for her. It had been three years since their eight months. Was this going to be her life from now on? Would she be watching Mamoru move on and never move from that place of heartache herself?

Maybe he'd had the right idea.

Maybe she needed to learn to accept it. Needed to learn to be grateful that she ever had it in the first place, keep the yearning locked in her heart, but move on. At least, maybe she should try, how ever impossible it seemed.

And so, the first guy's name was Daisuke. She knew him from one of Minako's rehearsals, and he'd perhaps too readily agreed to casually meet up with her. Her stomach was in knots and her lipstick was blush pink and she wore Rei's chic lucky pants and she had a panic code set up to text to Minako to get her out of here if she needed to break it off for whatever reason.

And so of course, when she stood out at the entrance of the izakaya at shortly after 5pm, looking in through the picture window to see if he was already there (he was), _of course_ when she moved to enter she looked up and there Mamoru was, standing right in front of her.

Her first not-really-a-date hadn't even _started_ yet.

And as always, he read her too well. He was about to say something, head tilted. But then he looked her up and down, terrified Usagi in her incriminating high-heeled, lip-sticked appearance glancing at the bar inside, and he instantly sobered.

She would never forget the alarm in his eyes. Or the way he instantly masked it away.

"Do you…" He licked his lips. "Do you have a… a date?"

"I…" She clutched her purse around her middle too hard. "Something like that."

"Oh," he said. And his whole face closed off. His hands pushed into his pockets. He was wearing the dark jeans they'd bought together during their eight months. "Yes," he said with a sharp nod. "Yes, good." And turned to leave.

It felt like a punch.

"Mamo-chan," she pressed out, heart pounding.

He didn't fully turn back to her, just his face, but his eyes were haunted, and it was all her fault.

"Minako set it up," Usagi croaked, and she crushed her bag tighter to her body to keep her hands from trembling.

He nodded, but wouldn't look at her.

And of course it was stupid. Of course it went against anything she'd set out to do tonight, but he was hurting and it was her fault this time and it slipped out because it was her most basic truth.

"I love you," she begged.

His face crumbled. He shook his head sharply, jerked to turn and leave again.

"I just…," she started, voice raised. "I thought you were right?" she told his back, and when he turned back to her once more, his face was dark and tormented.

"What?"

She licked her lips, forgetting her lipstick. It tasted weird. "With Unazuki's party?" Usagi tried, voice wavering. "And the girl? Moving on?"

For a second, he clearly didn't know what she was referring to. But she could watch the dawning terror unfold on his face, morph into alarm as she shrunk in regret.

"Wait," he said, glancing at the bar, scanning every face. "You're doing this because of me?"

She wilted, wobbled on her high heels, dug her fingers into the sleeves of her jacket and the faux leather of her bag. "I just…This is…"

He took a step closer. His eyes were wild. "Usako," he started. "I was chatting about a book. I was hiding in the kitchen so I wouldn't have to see whomever Unazuki had deemed perfect for you that wasn't me, and I was chatting about a book. I…" He shook his head.

But then he looked at her eyes and instantly sobered, and she had no idea what he'd seen in them to make him break off, but he did.

"Have fun with your date," he croaked over his shoulder, and didn't look back.

Usagi didn't use her panic code that night. But she spent it getting drunk and telling a patient guy she barely knew all the ways she would never get over Chiba Mamoru. He even patted her back and all, shared a story about a girl he wasn't quite over either, and at the end of the night she didn't feel better.

* * *

The night Mamoru had left her for her own good, Luna had tried to comfort her. Had told her that one day it would get easier.

But weeks and months and then years passed and during all of it, nothing about it had ever gotten easier.

Ail and An gone, they'd had a bit of peace until Tomoe's daimon eggs had terrorized Tokyo in a way they were so sure would be the end. And when it looked like they were dying either way, they'd slipped for the first time.

Or he had. While she'd begged him for a short and happy life almost from the first day on, had not cared for her well-being as long as she got to be with him, he'd been the strong one of them both. Until silence came and took every excuse, and they'd fallen like dominoes, no resistance left.

It had just happened. They hadn't dared mark it with words. Hadn't spoken about it, just gravitated towards each other in unspoken understanding.

They'd savored it like their personal last supper. Something holy bound to end.

He'd only held out his hand wordlessly. And when she took it, because she always would, he'd led her to his home and into his bed. She'd undressed holding his gaze in the silent darkness of his apartment, garment after garment, look after look. And all the while, his breath had grown more ragged with every layer falling, every bit of skin bared, and his eyes darker with every passing second. Until he stood so close she felt his breath on her skin, his heavy, wanting gaze tattooed into her heartbeat.

And when she'd stood naked in front of him, and he'd looked at her in such helpless reverence before he'd fallen to his knees and spread her apart and hummed against her wetness so broken and so pained she'd curled around him and stroked his hair even as her knees had started to wobble.

That night they'd kissed each other's tears and he'd held her face firmly between his hands so gingerly as he sunk into her to the beat of her heart, the spiel of Tokyo's neon lights reflecting off his face above her in the dead of night.

He'd loved her like someone who only got one chance at this. Kissed her like he wanted to brand her taste into his tongue in utter desperation. Held her like someone who'd loved you for two lifetimes and did not get to have you anyway.

The way he touched her, the way he moved in her, the way he cried her name and kept going, all night all night all night because they couldn't stop, they would never be able to stop. Traced her shape with his tongue and pleaded for the morning to never come, ghosted the tips of his fingers along every oh so sensitive patch of skin, flipped her over and unravelled her again, needy and relentless and until she howled in greedy, debauched hunger. Shaking with need, his teeth at her neck, her nipple pulled taut, wrapped around her thumb with a desperate hum. His lips at the shell of her ear, the insides of her wrist, tracing just the hypersensitive edge of her walls until he'd driven her so mad with want she clutched at his hair and fucked herself on his oh so willing tongue.

And the closer dawn came, the more desperate they became, the more frenzied and panicked and aggressively rough. As if, were they to only try hard enough, they could fuck themselves so hard into each other they might finally be one. As if something were to finally click and fit together like a machinery finally latching into place, and they might finally be allowed to be whole. Together. One.

It never worked, no matter how hard they tried. And oh they tried. They tried, so, so hard. Pitiful, delirious, fatal.

And so she felt his cramping, coated fingertips at her clit to the tremor of her every nerve, felt his cock throb deep inside her to her haggard pleas for more, begging him to fuck her deeper and to never stop, so pathetically wet, so brutally carnal, even as her walls fluttered around his thick, deep, hard dick as he filled her stretched her fucked her desperately. And still she cried for more and more and more. His cock in her hard and insatiable and as unrelenting as she was even as his hands brushed down her back her belly her fingertips in the most tender, most worshipful, most exquisite ways. And in return she clawed at him and sobbed for him, and her toes curled into his damp sheets when she pulled at his hair so hard, pulling him against her chest so sharply it must have hurt. But he just latched onto her nipple and sucked fiercely even though his tongue still caressed her like a precious gift.

Together they couldn't stop, and hid from the rising sun. Frantic and exhausted and frenzied in a way only someone would get that would never get to feel this again, together they kept going, clumsier and messier and manic, until his hardwood floor was littered with every last condom that had been left from the rest of the box by his bed used in soggy puddles on the ground, and something carnal and possessive revelled in her that none was left for him to use with someone else.

The consequences, of course, had been immediate. She felt it deep in her lungs, in the tremor in her hands. And yet she'd clutched his hand tightly as Super Sailor Moon marched to Mugen Academy and tried to save a teenage girl trapped in a monster's body before she destroyed the world. And when, for some unfathomable reason, she'd survived this battle too, Hotaru a baby in her arms and her eyes empty with her heart her driving force and ripped out for all to see, Mamoru had wept again.

What his tears were made of that morning exactly, she never learned.

But the memory of his touch was too much, the reverent stroke of his hands along the inside of her knees and thighs, the soft skin beneath her breast, his teeth pulling so deliciously at the shell of her ears and his lips against her eyelids and his sigh in her soul. The ripple of his abdominal muscles when she brushed her fingers across them. The pure agony when he thrust his hips into empty air when she so desperately wanted him inside of her forever. The dazed look in his eyes that never left her face when she flipped him over, lowered herself onto him with trembling, aching thighs and took him so excruciatingly slow until her walls rippled around him and he grabbed her ass, thrust up and lost control. And so, when the dead moon circus began to haunt the city first and his heart later, they had slipped and slipped again.

He hated himself for it.

But Pandora's box was wide open from that night on. She'd had a taste of him, the taste of the most delicious treat on earth and she was physically hurting from wanting more, even when the consequences always loomed.

Usagi hadn't cared. Had only cared to hide it from him, so terrified that he might know that she was his always even if she was not supposed to be, but of course he always knew.

The months they couldn't stay away at all? When not only his lung was black from the effect Nehelenia had on Earth and him, but hers was as well, because they couldn't keep away? He blamed himself when it was her decision, and she had never been so afraid for his life.

The next time he caved she'd almost died.

It was when she collapsed in battle one day and he screamed for her so tormented as he tried to shake her awake that the girls intervened.

Sat them down at different corners of the holy fire in Hikawa, knees pressed obediently into the tatami mats, and told them they had to stop.

She screamed and shouted at them when they asked Mamoru if this was what he wanted for her life. To die on his dick. Had made him cry so desperately and promise that it was not.

In this way, it had taken her almost dying once more, and the girls to reinforce it, that he finally had the strength to stop it. (She didn't. She never had.)

Had shouted for her to leave when she showed up at his place all the same, shouted at her shaking and agonized. Shouted at her panicked and trembling and frightened. So, so frightened.

_'What does it all matter if you just leave me anyway?! What was all this for?!'_

And then they stopped. Started to keep their distance. Tried. And for the longest while, they managed. Polite distances even when they were alone in a room. Gravitating around each other in distant orbits. At senshi meetings. In the streets of Juuban. At parties. At festivities at the shrine and when Mamoru started helping Ami prep for her intermediate examinations in med school. They tried. They stayed away.

And yet, this was when he started to slip into her room at night sometimes. When he broke into her room to hold her after the dreams got too bad, because some days he couldn't calm down if he didn't hear her breathing.

They told themselves it was ok.

* * *

For every thirty or forty nightmares, it seemed they were granted one good dream together. This one she spent in his bed, with her head against his chest, her legs curled in his lap, his arms tight around her, his chin on her hair and breathing deeply. Holding her, and she held him back.

Outside his window there was nothing. As if the world had needed to cease to exist for this to be possible. To be allowed a cuddle in his arms.

How sad was it to dream of a hug from the person you loved above all?

But this right here was what was taken from them. Sunday mornings waking up in the same bed with a smile. Lazy breakfasts together. He reads and she plays games on the couch, her legs thrown across his lap as he strokes them absentmindedly, not really noticing the motion of his hands as he was too sunk into his book. Welcome home and good night pecks of kisses that were so routine they meant little more than 'hello' and right now they meant the world. The knowledge that when you would turn around, he would be there, he would always be there.

"The Portuguese have a word for this," he mumbled into her hair, holding her too tightly, too desperately for this to masquerade as the effortless togetherness she so longed for.

"For what?" she whispered back, clawed against his chest.

"That empty, overbearing feeling of longing for something or someone you love. Something lost to you, even when you know you can never have it back," he said, and held her a little tighter. Held her so tight it would have been uncomfortable if it weren't exactly what she needed. Instead, she pressed her face harder against his throat so she could feel the words exactly where they were formed.

"The ghost of that love that will always remain even in its absence," he continued. "Always there to remind you what you are missing, what you could have had."

"Oh," she said, her heart heavy. She didn't want the Portuguese to have a word for this - for it meant they must know this agony too to have invented it.

"What is it?" she still whispered despite herself, and clutched at him a little more.

_Saudade._

* * *

The next one was Hiroshi. An aspiring cook Minako had met as he catered for one of her shoots, happily piping flowers onto dessert plates. "He's like, a male Mako-chan. You'll love him," she'd promised.

He gave Usagi a box of the prettiest madeleines she'd ever seen as a greeting, with a blush and a hand to his neck. And as they were sitting down for their lunch date at Tomori café - her small little lunch café in Bunkyo near the Kodansha headquarters that she could easily pop out to for an hour during office hours for the most casual of meetings with date-able strangers - she thought this one might be really, really sweet.

And so there they sat with the sandwiches-and-soup lunch sets and beverages in pretty ceramics in her usual spot by the window at the narrow table converted from an old Singer sewing machine, and he talked about the best cafes in town that he could take her to for a taste-test when it was, for once, not her who was distracted by Mamoru.

One moment Hiroshi was enthusiastically talking about choux cream, gesticulating and fully turned to her, and the next he faltered and glanced somewhere behind her.

"Uh, do you know this guy?" Hiroshi asked warily, and Usagi blinked in surprise, slung her arm around the backrest of her chair and bodily turned to look. "He keeps staring at you."

There he sat. An untouched beverage in pretty ceramics in front of him, behind her. In Bunkyo. Far from Azabujuban, far from any of his campuses, somewhere behind Waseda because that's where her office building happened to be located. There he sat, watching her on her date he shouldn't know she was at.

When her eyes met Mamoru's, they lingered. Only after a while did he break first. Averted his eyes and awkwardly lifted pretty ceramic to his lips.

"Who is this?" Hiroshi asked when she'd slowly turned back around, exhaling brokenly and lost in thought, hands in her lap.

She flicked her eyes back to him. For a second she'd forgotten where they were.

"My uh…" she croaked, as if it hurt her throat to even form the words.

 _Only, like, the man I was reborn for to love_.

"...My uh," she swallowed, "my Ex."

No sooner had she muttered the words had she felt Mamoru get up and leave.

* * *

A couple weeks later, she was on her way to meet Kioshi for Starbucks. A blonde boy with the sunniest smile and an attitude even more positive and bubbly than hers on her best days who, in a twist of unforeseen events, had been introduced to her by Shingo. Because even her oblivious little brother had taken her to the side and told her he couldn't stand how lonely she looked. Kioshi was in the Sailor Moon fanclub with him, one year Shingo's senior, one year her junior - a tall, always-smiling kindergarten teacher.

Mamoru forcefully grabbed her arm when she reached to open the heavy door.

His lips were a snarl, his fringe falling into his eyes even wilder than usual. "He's not good enough for you," he hissed.

Her sigh was so tired she felt it sack her bones. "That's not true, Mamo-chan," she murmured in defeat.

"He _isn't_ ," he snarled. Took a step closer. Towered over her.

And then he glared so hard at the person behind her who wanted to enter the shop that they jumped. Usagi sighed, pushed at his chest, and made way.

"You got it the wrong way around," she sighed, pushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear and leaned against the glass façade, a little ways away from the entrance. She hit the back of her head against the glass and glared at the sky. "He shouldn't have to put up with _me_."

The cursed girl who will never be able to love him the way she loves another.

But this time Mamoru didn't quite read her so well, it seemed. His fists clenched. His eyes were poison as he glared into the shop, no doubt knowing exactly which of the people inside she was to meet.

But his voice lacked all strength for what he said next. Only held the pain.

"This is who you want to replace me with?" he asked their reflection in the window as he looked inside.

It pricked at her eyes.

"You're being unfair," Usagi growled.

* * *

Sometimes, late at night when she couldn't sleep and lay awake staring at the untouched empty side of her bed, she thought that maybe they could cheat the curse.

She told herself that when his 90-something year-old neighbor died, she could move into the vacant apartment next to his. She could be the unmarried lady next door with the cat for the rest of their lives, with her bed pushed against the same wall as his. Who could tell him good morning and good night every day.

She didn't have to be his to spend her life only with him. Maybe they could be alone, together, forever. Like she did now sometimes, when she called him at night just to hear him breathe as he fell asleep, and he didn't say a word about it. When she placed the phone on the empty pillow beside hers, turned him on speaker, and closed her eyes to pretend he was there with her.

The man she was strolling along Shiba Park and the foot of Tokyo Tower with that late afternoon was Yuma, a voice actor for mostly video games and anime, who loved vintage arcade games and had quite objectively the sexiest voice she'd ever heard, whom she didn't even _know_ where Mako-chan knew him from but she and Minako had insisted and bought her a new dress for the occasion.

And this was how she found herself blushing warmly to the colors of autumn foliage sprinkled across the trees, the golden hue of the setting sun casting the day in a light so in harmony with the orange-red steel looming so high and giant above them, and yet hated herself a little. He was so sweet as they compared high scores of their most frequently played arcade games and he complimented her with a low whistle on her long-standing Sailor V gaming superiority. They'd all been so, so sweet.

And yet when Mamoru stopped right in front of her, not even deeming Yuma worth a glance, just wordlessly held out his hand for her once more, she took it without a single goodbye.

When he finally snapped and couldn't take that dating thing anymore, and kind of kidnapped her away from it right then and there, his hand around hers a death-grip.

He didn't even look back at her that much. Just pulled her away to Yuma's confused protests and put her on his bike. Pushed a helmet on her head with careful, trembling fingers, and drove her to his home.

Only when the door had closed behind them had he turned around and stood there, heaving chest and labored breath and intense, sorrow-filled eyes.

"I can't," he'd admitted brokenly. "I can't take it anymore."

It was her who ended up attacking. Her who literally, physically jumped him. And as easily as he'd caught her shoe that time after Unazuki's party, he'd caught her. Hands strong on her naked thighs beneath her fluttering skirt, and he groaned into her mouth as he hefted her higher oh so effortlessly, pushed his hands kneading, gripping up the length of her legs until they dug into her ass.

She slung her arms around his shoulders, clawed her hands into his hair, tucked it back violently so she could shove her tongue into his mouth so he might never pry her from him, and he only whimpered against her lips and opened his mouth wider for her onslaught.

He carried her to bed stumbling, moaning. Had to lower himself down with her because she refused to let herself be dropped, her legs slung tight around his hips, her mouth a messy sort of frenzy.

Only when he stroked his palms warm and strong against her face, her temple, her cheekbones, only then did she let go, gasping for breath, and his look was pure longing and pure torture, illuminated by that golden hue of sunset that had been meant for someone else tonight.

"Please," he begged. "Please, don't replace me." His hands in her hair, his eyes jumping between both of hers, his body so deliciously heavy on hers, pushing her down into his mattress.

With a growl and all her Sailor Moon strength, she tensed her legs around him and swiftly rolled him over. He hit the mattress with a bounce, before she stroked her hands harshly back into his hair, drawing back his fringe sharply, aligning his lips with hers. "No one is ever gonna replace you," she breathed against his lips. "No one's gonna fucking _ever_ compare."

His fingers flexed into her ass in sync with the gutted twitching of his face.

And then it slipped even more, when she stroked her hand down his chest sharply and traced his cock through his pants, and his eyes rolled back in his head. He was hard, and gasped so prettily, so brokenly, so terribly.

His eyelashes blinked up at her. "We can't," he begged, so torn and wanting and guilty, even as he turned his face in her hands, stroked himself against her touch like a needy kitten.

It was all in his eyes. They'd been over it a thousand times in situations just like this. His guilt. Her life a price he wouldn't pay, even after he'd willingly paid with worlds collapsing for them. His broken whispers. How she was his world. How he needed her to be in it. Even if it meant without him. How he couldn't do it, even if he couldn't stay away either. How this was the most difficult thing in all the world to uphold, and how he hated himself for it.

She grunted. Grabbed the hem of his sweatshirt and pulled it off him. He lifted his arms for her without any fight whatsoever.

"I know," she hissed.

Shuddering breath, those eyes so full of sorrow, he still ripped that date dress right off her too, perhaps a little too hard, a little too on purpose, and she felt something tear before he'd slipped it all the way over her head and hair.

"Usako," he whimpered. His hands skimming along her legs, and up up up, brushing the underside of her thin cotton bra so carefully, so gently.

She twisted impatiently, unclasped her bra on top of him, moving against him and he groaned, his fingers trembling when they met her naked breasts, her pebbled nipples.

"Just because you put your dick in me doesn't mean I'm yours," she scolded her old argument. One kiss, one hug, one fuck didn't mean they were together.

His eyes flicked back up to hers. "But I _want_ you to be," he whispered like a dirty, dangerous confession.

Clutching his face, she locked her knees around him, and purposefully, languidly, rubbed against the bulge in his pants.

"Me too," she promised. Forbidden.

He keened, guttural and pained, and pushed his hips hard off the bed and against her. Pulled at her knees, his hands strong and warm and his fingertips sunk into the back of them as he spread her tighter around him, pushing his hips firmly up against her even more.

She would have thrown her head back if it weren't for the deep need to watch his eyes, to watch him fall apart because of her and only her. And so she clawed her hands into his naked chest and stretched her hips to press back into his, moved and moved and moved the way it felt oh so good. Swirled her hips so his erection would rub against her panties just right, and did it so, so long until his jaw clenched and his eyes twitched and teared and he was biting his tongue so hard he looked like he was in pain.

She was so wet, she was so tense, she'd possibly never wanted him this much even if it had to be a lie, because if there was one thing they had going for them it was wanting eternally.

But when she couldn't take it anymore and finally lifted her hips up and off him, he reactively thrust his hips up against her in protest for a moment — until, with dawning understanding, he smashed them back down against the mattress violently, understanding what she wanted. When she clawed at his belt, his tight pants, his underwear, he whisper-shouted his relief in broken agony.

He helped her along, trembling hands pushing at his clothes, erection springing free, kicking and writhing to get fucking naked asap.

He rolled her over, then. Twisting, shaking his leg to get it all off even as his lips sucked in one nipple and his thumb drew expertly down the middle of her damp, damp panties.

She sucked the air in through her teeth, pressing back against his mouth and hand and popping her eyes open, toes and fingers flexing uncontrollably as his thumb skimmed beneath the hem of her cotton panties and swirled it around her entrance once to wet it, then up to brush around her clit, firm and practiced.

He moaned against her nipple, flattened his tongue and licked up her chest. "God," he groaned. "You're so wet."

She inhaled harshly, turned her head, found his eyes, his chin at her chest, his hand in her panties, his look full of no return.

He held her eyes for a while, thumb around her clit, her breathing so harsh, her slit so wet, and with silent understanding between them, he leaned over her, reached out next to her, and pressed his lips against hers, open-mouthed and wet and pretty damn fucking crazed.

The drawer he'd tried to navigate next to her misbehaved completely. Not looking, only moaning into her mouth, he pulled at it too strongly, and it pulled out from his nightstand all the way and crashed onto the floor, spilling its contents everywhere. She jumped, turned, his mouth slipping wet along her skin and landing at her ear as she looked, and he bit her earlobe and she moaned when he flicked his thumb up and down, up and down, swirl and back up.

Mamoru didn't even so much as grunt in irritation at the mess, undeterred. Notebooks, pens, his phone, all of it all over his floor, and in between individual foiled little packs of condoms, her lube. As if they'd never stopped, it had all still been in there, now scattered messily, and he didn't care — just bent over and snatched a condom and her pink tube from the floor.

She inhaled harshly, his hand in her panties, and glared at the floor, and at the condom moving from his hand to his mouth to rip at the foil and to his cock awkwardly, one handed.

As he rolled it down throbbing skin and bulging veins, she hissed. "I swear if you use these with anyone else—"

He glared at her even harder than she had at him. "Never." And then he squeezed at her pink lube and coated himself up even when she was so wet she was practically messing up his bed.

He did that whenever he wanted it to last. When he wanted her to last forever.

"Promise," she whispered needily, even as she pushed his hand out of her panties and her panties frantically down her legs.

His brow furrowed, turned so sad. Braced above her, he brushed his cock in his hand up and down her slit much like his thumb had done. It made her throw her head back for a needy kick and wail, and his free hand flew to her chin, drawing her eyes back to him.

"Usako," his croaked. "Never." He dipped his tip inside and she howled, and he drew it back out and back up, but always held her eyes, right over hers. "I'll never have sex with anyone but you. Ever."

It tore through her heart, and she clutched at his arm, his ass, and he must have seen how much she needed to hear this on her face, because he kept going.

"I'll never marry. I'll never be with anyone."

And with that, eyes boring deep into hers and his thumb at the apple of her cheek, he sunk deep into her.

She whimpered, clawed her hand into his warm, hard butt, needed him to go fast, needed him to never stop, because the lump was forming in her throat.

"Me too," she whispered at his lips, craning her neck to move hers closer to his. "Let's be alone. Together. Forever."

He sighed, drew out, and with one single deeper thrust, filled her back up, and she whimpered again when his hand moved back to her clit, even when his other hand drew tiny circles on her cheek with his thumb, head tilted in pitiful sadness.

"That's not what I want for your life, Usako," he whispered back at her lips so very torn.

Inhaling sharply, angrily, she rolled him over once more, and drew out a howl from him when she impaled herself sharply on his cock, pressed his hand to her clit, and set the pace.

He bit his lip, drew her close, let her take over, and really, it grew more possessive, rougher, angrier, more heartbroken by the second, and it was all her doing.

His hand at her ass, rocking up into her, his mouth on her neck sucking hard even when his hand stroked so tenderly down her clit.

Her hands on his face, pressing him down, daring him, loving him, begging him.

When he flipped her back over it was because her legs were getting heavy, trembling harder, her back shivering, and he pressed her into his sheets and pressed inside of her as deep as he could.

"Has any of these guys touched you?" he growled into her skin, desperate and harsh, his tongue catching her beading sweat.

"No," she gasped, moved up against him.

"Kissed you?" he demanded, hands deep.

"No," she swore.

"Promise," he ordered.

"I promise." And with that, she tensed and shook and shook.

But this could not be it yet. She could not let this be over yet. Ever.

But he knew her skin like a familiar instrument, they'd played this forbidden game too often and he knew all her secrets. Pulled out and bent until she breathed harshly again, moved his cock along her folds until she keened again, snatched her pink tube from the floor, squeezed, let the clear liquid dribble down his cock again and when he moved back in, it was so fucking slick it made her howl this time. Made her thrash her head against his pillows and clamp her thighs tightly against his hips and clawed her hands into his sheets even as he coated his fingers too to rub perhaps a tad too frantically at her clit.

It would be a while until she could come again, but he knew to pass the time.

And even in all their frenzy, he touched her like he always touched her. His fingertips cried gentle sonnets, his eyes spoke wedding vows, his lips painted devotion. Every brush of skin dripping of the melancholy that was knowing this was meant to be nothing but a memory.

Just a little while longer, and they were babbling everything out. Everything but what they wanted to say most.

_Mine. Yours._

In the end he sobbed into the crook of her neck, tears wet against her skin and she scratched her fingernails across his scalp, over and over.

For once, she didn't feel like crying at all. She had everything she wanted right here in her arms.

"I'm sorry," he sobbed against her neck so faintly she could barely make out the words. "I'm so, so sorry."

Stroking her cheek against his hair and clutching him harder, Usagi fought down a cough, glared at his ceiling, and vowed to herself to find a way to break the curse. Even if she had to fucking find a way to go back in time to do it, she would.

* * *

_Fin_

_For Now._

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> OBVIOUSLY this was the angstbus in full force. I'm so sorry. This just happened.
> 
> But well, it's my rendition of 'The Break Up Arc Is Real' in a sauce of Mutual (And mutually-acknowledged) Pining with a side of Forbidden Fruit and tons of mutual stalker tendencies our OTP is so very canon-known for. This sounded like fun to write lol? But yes you know what I love and want from the break-up arc is the SUFFERING and here you have it very condensed, ehem.
> 
> Also I want to send some love out to everyone who needs it this week. I felt terribly lonely this week and remembered that tons of people probably feel that way too this year and well, here I am waving to you from my own little cave! So, hopefully, other than the suffering I brought to our babies, I hope you feel a little less alone, together!
> 
> Anyway! Reviews are love and I KNOW reviewing a smutty story can be weird and I TOTALLY UNDERSTAND but also I would love to hear what you though!
> 
> (ALSO please no one expect to be able to fuck themselves through a packet of condoms per night. That usually only happens in shiny new relationship fever if at all, or, like here, when everyone involved is super friggin desperate like these two are, and a side of superhero stamina also wouldn't hurt. And when you ATTEMPT IT, please, lube is your friend! Lube is your good, good friend!)
> 
> Mwah! Be well!


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